Truly ICONIC winner 🥳

I honestly thought throwing the juries out of the semis was one of the better rule changes. If you can’t stand out enough in a group of 15-18 for the public to vote you into the Top 10 we don’t need you on the Saturday.

At least nobody who DNQed finished Top 8 on the televote.

agreed there was no point in bringing back juries in the semi finals. the three entries that got through cos of it all did rather poorly anyway.

SF1: Sweden and Belgium would’ve been replaced by Estonia and Montenegro

SF2: Czechia would’ve been replaced by Switzerland

oh hell naur you’re not gonna rob czechia like that x

Well an unexpected but great result for Bulgaria

Glad Isreal were only 3rd in public blue instead of 1st but their jury score was also way too high!

Sweden saved by the jury just like they were in 2008 with Hero. My System being third to last in the semi televote is mad to me, it has been so huge in Sweden. Weeks and weeks at No.1.

Dance music like that never travels well in Eurovision though I suppose. I had started to think she’d miss the top 10 or even 15 in the final but has done even worse than that.

truly shocked by sweden’s televote results, especially for the semis! it’s weird how it’s such a fine line between queen of kings style televote smashers and we will rave flops with dance music like that.

I think Sweden lacks the BOP factor that made Keiino among others so iconic. A bit like Tooji back in the day.

just give Sweden a listen, and just no LOL.

It's walmart Mike Hawkins x Toby Green Guetta x Morten

Bitterly disappointed for Delta - she was far and away the best for me on the night.

4 hours ago, gooddelta said:

Sweden saved by the jury just like they were in 2008 with Hero. My System being third to last in the semi televote is mad to me, it has been so huge in Sweden. Weeks and weeks at No.1.

Dance music like that never travels well in Eurovision though I suppose. I had started to think she’d miss the top 10 or even 15 in the final but has done even worse than that.

Just watched her performance and the woman herself doesn't even look like she wants to be there and the public seemed to largely agree with her.. what a dull performance for such a song.

2 hours ago, ___∆___ said:

Bitterly disappointed for Delta - she was far and away the best for me on the night.

The song wasn't good enough.. still don't recall a thing about it after the semi and final and couple of Spotify listens. The performance was great.

I haven't watched the show and won't be watching it. But I've just caught up with Delta's performance and OH MY f***ING GOD that was phenomenal 😍😍😍😍😍😍

19 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

I haven't watched the show and won't be watching it. But I've just caught up with Delta's performance and OH MY f***ING GOD that was phenomenal 😍😍😍😍😍😍

Such a moment.

Love that her mini UK/EU tour sold out immediately this morning when it went on sale, hopefully this is the start of some international love again for Delta.

^^ and yet we’re told ESC is not political 🤣

2 hours ago, ___∆___ said:

Such a moment.

Love that her mini UK/EU tour sold out immediately this morning when it went on sale, hopefully this is the start of some international love again for Delta.

Thats good it sold out, really happy to hear that and hopefully it cab lead to further UK success at the least.

1 hour ago, Mack. said:

Lol a minor diplomatic crisis there (I was baffled too considering how good Choke Me is)

Fun fact. This is the first time ever that a Semifinal opener went ahead to win the whole thing. First Semifinal winner that opened its Semi was Rybak in 2018 though.

Here's my take on the whole thing.

In general, I am really pleased with the results. Not because my favourite won but because some of the results were unpredictable.

Bulgaria winning is great. I didn't really get into the song until the live shows brought it to life. I like the mix of genres, which seems to be the key to winning Eurovision now. A first time winner is always good because it gives hope to other countries that haven't won. We also needed a Balkan win because they often struggle to attend due to internal budgeting issues. A contest held on their doorstep should help more of them come back - North Macedonia might see a way back and I hope Montenegro stay in the competition. I assume Romania and Moldova will enter next year given their success this year.

Speaking of which - Romania's result is also incredibly pleasing. Another song with multiple genres - although the juries didn't see fit to rewarded it very much at all. Fantastic televote for them too. For two countries to come back and excel to such a level is also wonderful. They didn't come back to make up the numbers.

Whether it was the expansion of the national juries to 7 members and for 2 of those 7 to be from the age group 18 to 25 that made the difference to the Bulgarian jury, it feels like something changed this year. We needed a new era when unpredictable songs can do very well.

It was also great that the public and the jury agreed on the best song - if only to stem the flow of toxic spite on Youtube and Twitter about the televote winner being the "real winner" that we had to endure when Nemo and Loreen won.

Some other thoughts. It seems that Italy can do no wrong. While I don't really dislike Italy - I certainly loved them a lot more between 2017 and 2021 - they could send anything from almost any genre and because it's in Italian Europe will throw points at it. Their last nine finishes - 6 5 2 1 6 4 7 5 5.

The UK should take a break. Hear me out. This year they tried something different. It didn't work. There just seems to be something of a mismatch between what the UK sends and what the voting public of Europe find entertaining. And that's fine. That's not an indication of the quality of the entry - just that it doesn't work in Eurovision Just take a break for a few years and spend a while thinking about a different approach.

The standard of staging was much higher this year. There weren't many bad ones.

I've made no secret about this but I think this is the weakest year since I started following the contest to this level in 2018. Finland was the only one that gave me proper Eurovision vibes. I liked Sweden a lot too. That was kind of it. There were some I admired - like Romania, Bulgaria and the UK. Finland just made my heart sing. They have put the work in, and deserve a victory soon. France too but France is internally selecting and that comes across like they're trying too hard when they almost engineer their entry. Perhaps like Switzerland and Austria, they need to change genre before they get their victory.

Greece are hungry for it too - although I failed to see how Ferto was the path to success.

Also...I said this a few months ago. I got half of my wish.

Edited Sunday at 20:371 day by Colm